#512773 - 03/25/1008:54 AMNot totally unexpected, what are people using?
neil
Neil Ticktin
Registered: 06/05/08
Posts: 1076
Loc: Westlake Village, CA
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posted by Ken
I am not totally surprised that this happened.
Based on the reduction of staff that we've been seeing the last few months at Now Software, I had to believe something like this was inevitable.
I only hope John can resurrect Now X as a new product and bring it to the life that it came so close to having.
I think the MacWorld review of the product had "death" written all over it, and that is unfortunate.
My question now is, what are people using for contacts and calendars? The data for my thousands of contacts is currently in Now X and Address Book, but of course I can only see the extra fields in Now X.
I have been exploring the SOHO Organizer demo. It seems mature but I remembered when Chronos had the really bad introduction of version 5.0. It has finally matured but I'm still wary of tech support. In their blog, they said that the main engineer in charge of tech support left by the end of December 2009 and they're still trying to catch up with their support tickets. sheez...
On the other hand, BusyCal is looking good but I don't have a contact solution.
I guess I'm using DevonThink Office Pro to manage my contact history. I create a folder for each contact and put all their e-mails, attachments, and contact notes.
On Mar 22, 8:11 pm, Ken <k...@watamix.com> wrote: > Any suggestions would be gladly accepted. > Thanks!
Last week, I concluded that the handwriting on the NOWX wall was dire, test-drove and subsequently purchased BusyCal (single user: $49.00).
Worth checking out, IMHO:
Integrated Address Book? Sort of... Links with Apple Address Book thus: in a scheduled event, if "Attendees" is marked, B/C will plug in contact from AB. Clicking and hold on that in B/C = options to either E-Mail or Open In Address Book.
Synching with iPhone: Pretty much instantaneous synching between BC and iCal; iCal then synchs to iPhone via iTunes and/or MobileME
We used Now Contact for about five years, until a few months ago, when we switched to Daylite. It was partially because we needed more functionality in a Mac-based office that shared data across about 15 computers.
We took a while to make the decision, and with our tens of thousands of contacts, it was a little messy to import the data into Daylite. And then it took us a few weeks to "un-learn" the logic of Now Contact and embrace Daylite.
I'm pretty happy with Daylite now, though I miss some of Now Contact's interface. However, the ability to link contacts and organizations to one another, not to mention the integration with Apple Mail, has been pretty valuable.
I bit the bullet and bought BusyCal. It works directly with the iCal database and can sync to Google Calendar. SOHO Organizer was nice but it didn't integrate as nicely unless you have a MobileMe account. I don't have MobileMe and SOHO Organizer seems to need MobileMe to sync to the iCal and the iPhone. Unless someone knows something about how to do this without MobileMe?
I liked having the integrated contact solution but I guess I'll have to look elsewhere.
I just couldn't get into Daylite. Where are the user interface designers for Daylite? The biggest thing I couldn't live without was having tasks appear on my monthly calendar view. I'm a visual kind of guy and like to see tasks spaced out. I'd probably have to change tasks into events to make it work on Daylite. Daylite is at 3.9.x now and version 3.10 will be coming soon. I'll probably look at Daylite in the future.....
A lot depends on the workflow you use. Personally, tasks to me rarely are things that have to be done at a specific time. Date yes, but not time. So I assign a due date to them and on my calendar view, I have them displayed on the right side of my calendar. The nice thing about this method is that it only shows the tasks that are due within the range of the dates that I am looking at on my calendar. So if I just to a week in June, I will only see tasks that are due during that week. I can choose to show the overdue tasks but it keeps me more 'in the moment'.
For me, the actual calendar is reserved for actual appointments.
In David Allen's GTD (Getting Things Done) workflow, the calendar is used as a place to store appointments or any tasks that have to be done by a certain deadline.
If your boss has to go into a meeting on Thursday and he wants you to give him a budget analysis by Tuesday, you'd better believe that your task is due on Tuesday. Any task that has a "hard" deadline is placed on the calendar as well. A hard deadline is any due date in which a task must be done by a certain date/time or there will be consequences. In this case, I could face employment termination if my career depended on that deadline.
O course, many people mistakenly like to use "soft" deadlines. These are artificial deadlines that people place on tasks that won't have any consequences if a certain date/time is reached. Things like "mow the grass". If I don't cut the grass on Friday, it won't really change any thing.
I'm a visual kind of guy. Sometimes I like seeing a list view. But most of the time, I like seeing "hard" deadline tasks on a monthly calendar view. iCal and Daylite only shows appointments and events on the monthly view with a side list of tasks on the right. But BusyCal, Now X, and SOHO Organizer offers the ability to show tasks as well as appointments.
I'd just like the ability to show either or in Daylite.
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